Bones dug out of plot

Human bones were dug up from a plot in Bansdroni on Monday, with police suspecting the remains to be of alleged arms supplier Madan Roy who has been missing for more than two years.

The police started digging the plot at Bansdroni’s Rania in course of a probe into the disappearance of another person of the locality.

Surjyadeb Panda, 30, a land broker and supplier of construction materials, went missing on May 12, the day the Lok Sabha polls were held in Calcutta.

A complaint lodged by his family the next day said Panda had got a call on his return home after casting his vote. He immediately left to join what he had described to his family as a “feast”.

Based on the complaint, police picked up two men, Pratap Bag and Raju Roy. “By tracking their cell phone tower locations, we came to know that they were with Panda on May 12 evening,” said an officer of Sonarpur police station. “They later admitted they knew that Panda had been murdered and buried in a marshy tract in the locality.” Panda’s body was recovered from the plot on Saturday.

The police said Pratap and Raju had told them that Panda’s neighbour Gnansagar Sharma, who has criminal antecedents and was out on bail, might have killed the broker.

Sharma, whom Bag and Roy described as a supplier of illegal arms, has been absconding since Saturday.

The sleuths came to know about two aides of Sharma — Bablu Jadav and Kedarnath Singh — and called them to the police station on Sunday night.

“While interrogating Jadav and Singh, we came to know that Sharma had killed another man, Madan Roy, an auto driver who used to supply him arms. Roy has been missing for two-and-a-half-years. The duo said Roy’s body had been buried behind Sharma’s house,” the officer said. “We have learnt that Sharma had a relationship with Madan’s wife, who is missing, too.”

According to the police, Sharma used to supply arms to Calcutta, the two 24-Parganas and Howrah.

On Monday, the inspector-in-charge of Sonarpur, sub-divisional police officer of Baruipur and an executive magistrate dug up the plot. A few bones and a skull were dug out. “We have sent the bones for forensic tests,” said K.P. Barui, the additional superintendent of police, South 24- Parganas.